


Some Stay

by Galactica_Actual



Category: High-Rise (2015)
Genre: F/M, Literally the only High-Rise fanfiction on AO3 right now that’s not smut, Mental Breakdown, Sorry to disappoint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 14:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10832874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galactica_Actual/pseuds/Galactica_Actual
Summary: Some stay because they have nowhere else to go. Some stay to prove they can. But Laing, Laing stays for her.





	Some Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance, this got dark fast. Apparently I was having a bad day. I think it’s pretty accurate though, that whole damn movie was a shit show.
> 
> This is a first draft, I might come back and touch it up later. Basically what happened was I was overtired and I just wrote. For like, five hours. This was one of the things that came out of it.

Some stay because they see themselves as crucial fighters in the trenches of social injustice, rising up against the horrible Higher-Ups. Send their families away to a safe place while they carry on fighting.

Some stay because they have to, because they have nowhere else to go. Because even in this hell they have a roof over their heads to keep the rain out, and they’re too proud to live on the streets.

Still others stay out of sheer spite, to spit in the eye of the chaos itself, to prove that nothing, not even the looming threat of starvation or disembowelment, can drive them unwillingly from their homes.

But Laing, Laing stays for her. Stays because she won’t abandon her husband, who has convinced himself he can’t live without the thrill of the chase, the click of a camera shutter on some horrendous happening he chooses to document rather than hinder. Someone has to know. The Upper Levels have to pay for what they have done. And Wilder’s the one’s going to tell the world.

Wilder won’t leave, so Helen stays. And Laing realized a while back that Wilder doesn’t give a flying fuck what happens to his wife or his baby, not so long as he gets his story. So Laing waits. And watches. Anyone wants to touch Helen has to get through him, and he’s already made it clear he knows how to break open a man’s skull and has no qualms about doing so. He waits for days, for weeks, for months, wading through trash and shit and sick on his long commute to work every day, and after a day of work he _comes back _. Every day.__

__Helen is grateful, of course. She knows that he’s the only reason she hasn’t joined the scores of rape victims clinging with bloodied fingers to every rung of the social ladder. Knows that nothing with a quim is safe these days, and Laing is the only protective layer between her and the hungry dogs drooling and snapping at her swollen ankles. For now, the dogs know to keep their distance. And she knows she’s safe as long as Laing’s here._ _

__By the time Wilder dies and Helen finally leaves, she knows Laing won’t be coming with her. Knows that he’s lost his mind. Knows that it’s her fault. Knows she should stay with him, repay the debt she owes him by keeping him alive, because that’s what it’s come to - stopping him doing something rash and getting himself killed. But she also has children. Children that can’t survive in this horrible place any longer. So she leaves._ _

__It’s the last straw for Laing. Any scrap of sanity he held onto for her sake flees him as he watches her retreating back, the backs of her litter of children. And when she pauses to retch onto the floor, he knows somewhere in his tangled, ruined mind that it’s not only her he’s losing. She knows, too, turns to look over her shoulder at him with an apologetic smile, mutters something about bad meat he knows she didn’t have, because he ate with her last night and watched her give all her food to her children._ _

__But it doesn’t matter. Laing will just go back to Charlotte, Charlotte will take him back, she’s just as crazy as he is. And by the time he cooks the last of his sanity into the white husky, he doesn’t even remember the pretty pregnant girl he sacrificed his beautiful mind for._ _


End file.
